About Settle Sessions

Wednesday, 1 November 2017

The final Settle Session of
the year offers inspiration from over 100 years of Craven and
international history and culture.

Well known local author and
poet Jean Harrison will read from her new pamphlet 'The Tilt',
set in Ghana. She worked there for eight years in the Sixties, and
returned for a visit thirty years later. The work shows the contrasts
and similarities as the new country grew.

'Adventus'
is writer Sue Vickerman's well-timed new poetry collection for Brexit
Britain: what is to come? These twenty-five poems are perennials but
may also serve as daily readings from 1st December, leading you
through a season of endings and traumas, wistfulness, nostalgia, and
anxieties about an uncertain future - with a dash of humour thrown
in.

Sue's writings have
appeared in The Guardian and TES, her novel 'Special
Needs' is in public
libraries, and her poems and fiction have been commended by Susie
Orbach (a lovely book),
Sandi Toksvig (loved
it!), the late Magnus
Magnusson (a glorious
achievement!) and
Bloodaxe's Neil Astley (excellent).

Earlier this year, The Tom
Twistleton Centenary Festival held a poetry competition for local
young people inspired by the poet's work, much of it in local
dialect. From a shortlist of nine, winner Max Clarke will read his
poem 'The Yorkshire Rose', along with second prize winner
Daniel Craig with his poem 'Settle is my home' and commended
poet Daniel Gilles with his work 'Summer in Yorkshire.'
Freddie Fairweather-Smith came third with 'The Dales'.

The
evening will be on Friday 17th November at 7.30pm at The
Folly in Settle. Tickets £6, available from The Folly, Cave and Crag
or The Courtyard Dairy Lawkland or on the door. More details from info@settlesessions.co.uk

Saturday, 30 September 2017

Settle Sessions' 2017 competition drew over 400 entries from all over the UK - and produced a very high standard selection.

The winners were announced by judge Kim Moore at our September evening. Kim said she was very impressed by the quality of entries. She explained that she looks for poems that she herself couldn't write.

We reproduce the poems by the three prize winners with the shortlist of commended entries. We were delighted and a little humbled by the excellent poems entered. Congratulations to the winners and those commended, and thank you to everyone who entered. We'll be launching our 2018 competition next Spring.

You can see a review of the evening at the end of this list. We also thanked Jean Harrison for all who work on Settle Sessions. She started the venture some five years ago and has driven our programmes ever since, bringing top quality poets and writers to Settle.

First Prize: Caroline Price from Framlingham, Suffolk

Emergence

(Baby
mammoth, Natural History Museum)

You
lie so peacefully you could be

sleeping,
soundly, on your side

on
the white sheet rucked and folded like

the
Yamal snows. Your flank

exposed,
each ridge and wrinkle in your hide

quite
visible, the colour of wet sand or the clay that set

around
you when you fell, legs stretched as if you

toppled
in mid-thought, still walking, four feet

trampling
at the air. Your trunk curled in

protectively,
its two soft

flanges
of skin preserved, a miracle,

for
our speculation: imagining you

thirsty
and using them to sweep the snow

into
your mouth, flakes spilling, hanging

in
a premature moustache. Your domed head

calm,
your month-old weight at rest within its

shadow-shape
of cloth and foam as it was when you

keeled
over in the Siberian wastes and closed your eyes

and
died and more snow fell and turned

the
mud to ice, encasing you;

and you lay in your bed

for
forty thousand years – the time it took for us

to
arrive, for the earth with a gasp

to
thrust you to its surface as the reindeer herder

and
his sons came hurtling past with their sledges and dogs

and
tripped on the cracked-open

crust
of knowledge and found you.

Second Prize: Vicki Bertram from Kirkby Stephen Cumbria

Silkie

Stanley, the white
cockerel,

motorised helmet
plume,

cavalier ruff
lifting

at the stiff dance
he stamps

to show off his
spurs-

Stanley is dead.

He was a gift

with Lucy the goose,
inseparable till

her ganders muscled
him out and

he found his place
in the pecking-order,

chivvier of hens.

No more crowing

and it is the season

for his pre-dawn,
drawn-out

over-blown,
monotonous

declarations.

Snowdrops shiver

as wind rakes iced
scrub,

seeking his ragged
call

to tear spring’s silence,

shake bulbs awake

to poke white through darkness.

No corpse, of course.

A few drab feathers snared in wire.

Remember the girls
chasing him,

that comic scoot
behind the sycamore?

The crinkly labial
scrunch

of his foppish
coxcomb?

Our latest loss.
Minor, of course.

We closed the door
too late.

The bright light of
him gone.

Fell and field and
walls and rock

pulse absence.

Like a home in early
new year,

denuded, or this
vista suddenly

dull green again,
snow’s white glory

vanquished by rain.

Third Prize: Kerry Darbishire from Kendal, Cumbria

A
Winter’s Night

(after
The Song of Wandering Aengus – W B Yeats)

Geese
safe inside, I shut the door

and
turned into the frosty night,

left
settling chatter, rustling straw

four
still white wings tucked warm and tight.

The
Plough above the sycamore

and
Seven Sisters clear to see,

the
green and red lights in the north

like
sailors’ lanterns on the sea.

Then
in a breeze I lifted through

November
branches high and bare,

bones
needle-thin and shining new

my
feathers glided brimmed with air.

The
moon a scythe upon my back

and
frozen scent of earth below,

my
cattle shrunk to mice and rats

as I
flew silently as snow.

Though
now it seems I’m almost blind

in
trodden pathways long ago,

in
hope I’ll search until I find

tracks
in a land I used to know.

Commended poems

Wish
I were here now John Foggin Ossett

Witchcraft at Belvoir Tina Negus Grantham

Heatwave Mary Jane Holmes Lunedale

An
old man’s reply to Jenny Joseph Bill Adair Stirling

Bumble
bee A.F. Paterson Poole

The school trip Kerry Darbishire Kendal

Multidrop Peter
Wyton Longlevens, Glos

Review of the evening

Poetic
abundance

400
hundred poems winged their way to Settle Sessions during the Summer
to take part in their second national poetry competition. Coming from
across the UK and covering a variety of styles and subjects
competition judge Kim Moore finally selected: ‘Emergence’
Caroline Price’s winning poem which vividly described the finding
of a baby mammoth, whilst Vicki Bertram’s second prize eulogised
her departed white cockerel in ‘Silkie’ and Kerry Darbishire’s
took third prize inspired by WB Yeats in ‘The Winter’s Night’.

Kim
continued the evening with new work, drawing from her transition away
from 13 years of teaching in ‘Leaving Teaching’ and no longer
needing to ‘pull a perfect b flat from the air’ to examples from
her new poetry sequence, ‘All the Men I Never Married’, including
calling out the sexist behaviour she still encounters.

Calder
Valley based poet Carola Luther describing herself as ‘not a jolly
poet’ gave a sample of her work with poems blending her former life
in South Africa made contemporary with the news of the death of a
former friend, her observations of women seeking economic survival
through prostitution in ‘Commerce Madrid 2012’ and highlighting
the impact of recent flooding in ‘The Rising’.

Sarah Wiltshire

The
next Settle Session will be on Friday 17th
November at 7.30pm (venue to be confirmed). It will feature two well
know local writers Jean Harrison and Sue Vickerman. Both published
poets and novelists, they will be reading from their latest work. Sue
recently spent a year in China and has produced a book of her
experiences.

The
evening will also include young local poets who took part in the Tom
Twisleton Project. This commemorates the centenary of the Settle
artisan and dialect poet. The new work is in response to his work and
celebrates local life today.

Tickets
are £6 available from The Folly, Cave and Crag and The Cheese Centre
Lawkland. For more information please see settlesessions.co.uk

Friday, 25 August 2017

Veronica Caperon presented a workshop for 8-12 year olds as part of the Tom Twistleton Festival at the Library in Settle. "I was very pleasantly by the standard of work which the children produced" she said. You can see some of the results at the exhibition planned for the end of September at The Folly.

And then there's the excitment surrounding the 2017 SS poetry competiton winners!

Entries
from all over the UK were received for the 2017 Settle Sessions
Poetry Competition with local poets in the top three prizes.

The
winners will be announced at the special evening on Friday 29th
September at The Friends Meeting House in Settle. Amongst the prize
winners are local writers from Kendal, Lunedale and Kirkby Stephen as
well as some from as far apart as Suffolk, Scotland, West Yorkshire
and Dorset.

Appearing
at the evening will be two leading British poets.

Competition judge Kim Moore, who
lives and works in Cumbria, is fast building an admirable reputation
for her work. Her first full length collection The Art of
Falling was published by Seren in April 2015.
She won a New Writing North Award in 2014, an Eric Gregory Award in
2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2012. Her first pamphlet If
We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in The Poetry Business
Pamphlet Competition, judged by Carol Ann Duffy.

Carola Luther was born in 1959. She grew up in South Africa and moved to
England in 1981. She works in Leeds and lives in the Yorkshire
Pennines. Her first Carcanet collection Walking the Animals was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2004. She was poet in residence at The Wordsworth Trust 2011-12.

Prize
winners and commended poets will be invited to read their award
winning entries. Tickets for the evening, which starts at 7.30pm, are
available from Cave and Crag and The Folly in Settle, and The Cheese
Centre in Lawkland, or on the door, priced £6.

Friday, 30 June 2017

If ever
there was a chance to see how enjoyable and accessible modern poetry
can be, it was at the summer Settle Session at The Folly.

Cumbrian
Kathleen Jones has made her name as a biographer, notably of
Katherine Mansfield and the Wordsworth's women. On this occasion, her
poems conjured up heartache at the departure gate, the angst of being
sixteen, and the life - and death - of the Brontes around the
Yorkshire moors. The audience was spellbound by the evocative
portraits she paints.

A founder
member of Lancaster's April Poets, Ron Scowcroft, like Kathleen, has
a string of prizes for his work.
It's easy to see why in both cases.
From Portugal to his father's phonograph, he brought humour and
humanity; his poem on the plight of refugees was moving, as his
recollection of chatting to David Hockney was funny.

Irresistible
elephants were the subjects in the 'Read Two' open slot with Jean
Stevens reading six poems from 'A Poetry of Elephants'. This
anthology was produced to raise funds for wildlife and habitat
protection in East Africa. The images by various poets were amusing,
affectionate, heart rending, and always engaging.

Settle
Sessions claims to have stories and poems for everyone. These were
delivered in spades.

Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Our
Next Session will be on Friday 23rd June at The Folly in Settle. 6.30pm
drinks reception followed by the programme for the evening - featuring
Elephant poems, Kathleen Jones and Roger Scowcroft. See more here

We had a great time at The Festival of Happiness in Settle last weekend. Well done to our friends at Settle Stories for organising it. It was burning hot sunshine in the morning and monsoon-like rain in the afternoon, but hey! this was the May Bank Holiday weekend!

As well as having fun with our own and other people's poems in our half our slot later in the day, we invited everyone during the day to add a line or two to 'Everyone's Poem' - which they did!

Around 40 people, young, old and in the middle came along and added a line or two. The result is this funny, witty, moving, thought provoking poem - one to be very proud of!

Wednesday, 10 May 2017

Settle Sessions took part in the Settle Stories Festival of Happiness in May. We aimed to get everyone to add a line or two to 'Everyone's Poem' all day which you can find out about here.

The
next Session will be on Friday 23rd June at 7.30pm at The Folly in
Settle with prize winning poets Ron Scowcroft and Kathleen Jones. It
will also be the group's AGM and reception.

The evening begins at 6.30pm with a drinks reception followed by a brief AGM.

Then the main event begins at 7.30pm

Read Two is a special this time, devoted to poems about Elephants taken from A Poetry of Elephants, compiled by Rebecca
Gethin. She and a group of poets make the book
a reality and the publisher ValMor gave their services for free. 100% of the proceeds from book sales will go to The David Sheldrick
Wildlife Trust, which is one of the most successful conservation
organisations for wildlife and habitat protection in East Africa.

Ron Scowcroft

Ron Scowcroft's
poems have appeared in many literary magazines, prize winners’
anthologies and literary websites. They have also featured in
exhibitions by artists Jayne Simpson and John Morrison and been
adapted for video by Morph Films. His pamphlet ‘Moon Garden’ was
published by Wayleave Press in 2014. He was awarded joint first prize
in the McLellan Poetry Competition (2013) and has been highly
commended in The Yorkshire Open (2012) and Magma (2011) competitions,
as well as being longlisted in the National, Strokestown and Bridport
competitions. Ron is a founder member of Lancaster based April Poets

Kathleen
Jones was born and brought up on a hill farm in Cumbria and now lives
with her partner, sculptor Neil Ferber, on the edge of the Lake
District. She has been writing since she was a child and has
published fourteen books including eight biographies, a novel and a
collection of poetry. She lived for several years in Africa and the
Middle East, where she worked for the Qatar Broadcasting Corporation.
Since then she has written extensively for BBC radio and contributed
to several television documentaries. Kathleen was appointed as a
Royal Literary Fund Fellow in 2008 and is currently also a Fellow of
the English Society. Her two most recent biographies are ‘Katherine
Mansfield: The Storyteller’ (published by Penguin NZ and Edinburgh
University Press) and ‘Norman Nicholson: The Whispering Poet’,
(published in 2013 by The Book Mill). She is also the author of two
novels, The
Sun's Companion
and The
Centauress.

Settle
Sessions got off to a flying start with the first event for 2017 in
front of a cosy fire at The Folly, Settle.

The
audience responded warmly to a
variety of poems from six different readers, some local, others from
further afield. The evening kicked off with two readings of two
poems each from poets from Middlesborough and Kendal, evoking the
life of very different places.

After
this Veronica Caperon from Lawkland got the audience laughing and
listening with poems full of warm feeling and humour.

The
second half began with more humour, when Joan Butler from Austwick
read us an encounter between a gushing American tourist and
a laconic Dales farmer. We were then taken into deeper water by
Maggie How describing the struggle to get through to a close family
member suffering from dementia.

We
were never far from the everyday world, though looking at it from new
angles. The other main reader was Ann Pilling from Hawes whose work
held us in deep attention with its musicality and sense of deep
relationships.